Page 118 of Make Them Bleed

“A discount,” Coleman says. “You pay for discretion. You got greedy.”

Etta cuts in. “Enough. It’s daylight. We’re at the dock. The detective’s husband runs the club across the lot. We solve this without bodies or we take this to the river after dark.”

Juno goes still atriver. I squeeze the chair arm with my bound fingers until pain sharpens my head.

Coleman considers. He taps his ring against the table once, twice. “Offer them a step down,” he says finally. “Buy time. Then decide whether a more final answer is required.”

Bob looks at Juno. “Walk away,” he says. “Please. I will resign. I will tell your mother. I will… fix what I can. Just stop. You don’t know these men.”

“Oh, I know them,” Juno says. “And I know my sister is dead because you were a coward who wanted to keep having your cake and eating it too.”

Silence. It hits the walls and sits there.

Coleman’s smile drops for the first time. He nods to the muscle. “Gag him,” he says, jerking his chin at me. “She can speak. He cannot.”

The muscle guy steps in. I twist, bring my knee up, crack his thigh hard enough to stun him. He swears. The other moves. I rock my chair back on that millimeter of play and slam the rear leg into the man’s shin. He stumbles. I’m ready to fight more when a fist connects with my jaw. Stars pop.

“Stop,” Coleman snaps.

Etta raps the table with her knuckles. “Enough. We are not punching on my deck. We are not making noise. This is sloppy.”

Coleman adjusts his cuff, obviously annoyed. “Tidy up then.”

Etta steps between us and the muscle, palms out. “Everyone shut up for thirty seconds.” She looks at Juno. “Listen to me. You want the people who ordered this to face consequences. If you die today, you give them a martyr they can spin into a cautionary tale. If you walk out, you keep driving the knife they fear… daylight.”

Juno stares her down. “Then untie me.”

Etta weighs it. She looks at Coleman, and he shrugs. She looks at Bob. He looks like he’s going to be sick.

“Cut her,” she tells the muscle guy.

He hesitates. Coleman nods. The man bends, slices the tie at Juno’s wrists with a pocket knife. She flexes her hands, blood rushing back, jaw set. She doesn’t move for my ties. She doesn’t make it a fight. She just sits up and folds her hands in her lap like she’s in a meeting and says, very clear, “Arrest your way out of this.”

Coleman sighs. “We tried civility.”

Etta’s eyes cut to him. “And now we try logic. Detective Huxley will look for these two if they go missing for more than an hour. Devereaux will notice a disturbance at his dock. Your yacht will not be where you left it. We delay and we look messy. We let them walk with conditions,westay in control.”

“What conditions?” Juno asks.

Etta lays it out like bullet points. “You stop publishing for seventy-two hours. You do not go to your mother’s house tonight. Bob resigns today. He tells your mother tonight. He names names privately to Detective Huxley tomorrow morning. You do not mention me, or Coleman. Or Bob.”

“No,” Juno says.

“Yes,” Etta says. “Or you go in the river after sundown.”

Juno’s breath hitches. I catch her eye. “We take it,” I say. “We walk. We regroup. We burn them legally.”

She looks at me a long second. “Seventy-two hours,” she says to Etta. “Not a minute more.”

“And Bob resigns today,” I add. “Publicly. Statement by close of business. If he doesn’t, we drop a compilation at six.”

Coleman shakes his head, bored. “So many lines you can’t enforce.”

“You’d be surprised,” I say.

Etta considers, then nods once. “Agreed.” She looks at Bob. “Call your office.”

Bob fumbles for his phone. His hands shake. He scrolls. He stares at his reflection in the black screen for a beat too long, then dials.